Moments of Creative Genius

Creative Genius is like lightning. You can’t predict when or where it might strike, and lots of people will go through their entire lives without ever knowing that electrifying sensation.

But that doesn’t mean you have to be a genius to experience that a single moment of unspeakable brilliance. Sure, being super smart or talented doesn’t hurt. But the point of this series is not celebrate geniuses per se. Instead, we’re interested in those moments of genius, those passing seconds of brilliance that allow individuals–genius or otherwise–to create art of lasting cultural importance.

With each entry, we’ll take the time to appreciate that flash-bang moment that an immortal song was born, that a perfect scene was filmed, that an inspired stroke of the pen was recorded. And in the spirit of our encompassing view of education, we appreciate genius in all its forms; intellectual, artistic, athletic, and in forms that defy both categorization and imagination.

Join us as we marvel at the bounty of human ingenuity, fragile and fleeting though it may be.

About David Tomar

David A. Tomar is an author and journalist who has written extensively on education, music, pop culture and basically any other topic that doesn’t involve math.

Tomar catapulted to notoriety with his controversial and eye-opening 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education article, “The Shadow Scholar.” Writing under the pseudonym Ed Dante (a name now committed to perpetuity by its own Wikipedia entry), Tomar spilled the beans on his decade-long career as an academic ghostwriter while simultaneously announcing his retirement from the business.

Tomar has written for The New York Times and Huffington Post, and has appeared on The Today Show and ABC World News. Tomar is also a long-suffering Philadelphia Phillies fan who is not above hurling objects at his television during baseball season.